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"^ ^' r5 SPEECH 






HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, 

OF HASSACHUSETTS, 

DECEMBER 22, 1902, 

AT THE BANQUET OF THE 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, 

OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

AT PHILADELPHIA. 



WASHINGTON D. C: 
THE SAXTON PRINTING CO. 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, 

OF HASSACHUSETTS, 

DECEMBER 22, 1902, 

AT THE BANQUET OF THE 

NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, 

OF PENNSYLVANIA, 

AT PHILADELPHIA. 



WASHINGTON D. C: 

THE SAXTON PRINTING CO. 

1903 



DECEMBER 22, 1902. 



That would be a cold heart indeed, that were not stirred to its 
depths by your kindly greeting. It has all the more value be- 
cause I know that it comes wholly from your kindness, and not 
from any deserving of mine. 

It is certainly a great delight, as it is a great honor and privi- 
lege, to unite with the dwellers in your famous and beautiful city, 
when they celebrate the Pilgrims. How it may be with other 
children I cannot tell. But the children of the Pilgrims love 
their memory all the better, the more they are separated from 
them by the space oY^ time. 

I suppose the men and women who are gathered about tliese 
tables are here by right of a personal kindred with the Pilgrims 
who came over with Bradford and Carver^ and Brewster; or the 
Puritans who came over with Endicott or Winthrop. But Mas- 
sachusetts can claim a property in Pennsylvania, and Boston can 
claim a property in Philadelphia by the great inheritance of char- 
acter. If our community had made no other contribution to 
yours than Franklin and Horace Binney it would be enough 
reason for inviting New England men to a place in any great 
festival here. 

But New England, the birth-place of American liberty, as has 
been said already, has also its peculiar relation to the birth-place 
of Independence. It was here, from 1774 to 17»7, and again 
from 1789 to 1801, when Independence was won, when the Con- 
stitution was framed, when the great administrations of Washing- 
ton and John Adams inaugurated the Constitution, that the men 



of New England did their great work. Here Hancock signed 
his name in letters visible across the broad Atlantic. Here John 
Adams — the Colossus of debate — vindicated the Declaration 
against the hesitation of its opponents by his invincible argument. 
Here Sam Adams — king of men — controlled the greatest intel- 
lects of his time by his wise, broad and prevailing counsel. Here 
Ellsworth led the Senate and framed the Judiciary Act. Here 
John Adams took the chair as \'ice Presidentolthe Senate, 
Here, later, he was clothed with the Presidential office. Here he 
commissioned Marshal. Here he incurred the resentment of his 
own party by sending the envoys which saved the infant Republic 
from war with France. Here the matchless argument and elo- 
quence of Fisher Ames saved the good faith and honor of the 
Republic. 

After the sufferings of the voyage, and after the first terrible 
winter, wdien of the hundred and one there were but seven at one 
time able to care for the sick and d)ing, and more than half the 
company died, yet not one went back to England in the ship in 
the spring, the life of our fathers and mothers was not, in general, 
one of physical hardship. Indeed, our luxuries were their com- 
mon food. Wild geese, and wild turkeys, and wild ducks, veni- 
son, and Cotuit oysters (our brethren of Connecticut, who were 
then stricter in their theology than we were in Massachusetts, pre- 
ferred "Bluepoints"), and harbor clams, and lobsters and salmon 
and shad, and brook trout, and every variety of fish, all the fowls of 
air, and all the fish of the stream and the pond and the sea, and 
berries and Indian corn were abundant on their tables. They 
were in constant danger of the wild beast and the savage until 
the end of King Philip's war in August, 1676, Every mother 
in New England must have suffered the agony of daily and 
nightly terror for herself and her children. There were, it is 
.said, ten thousand warriors organized by King Philip, who could 
issue out in little bands at any point from the forest to attack set- 
tlements extending over a large part of Connecticut, and Rhode 
Island, and Massachusetts, from the mouth of the Penobscot to 
New Haven, containing, all told, only about eighty thousand 
people. King Philip was an able and adroit savage. His plan 



\ 



for the extermination of the white man was cunningly conceived. 
It was baffled only by the heroic and adventurous courage and 
skill of men, themselves disciplined by life in the forest, led by 
men trained in the great military school of which Cromwell was 
master. 

The chief sorrow and suffering of the Pilgrim came from the 
fact that he was an exile. I do not believe that any man or 
woman who stayed at home in England, loved her with a more 
intense affection than these men who had left her for conscience's 
sake. Her beautiful fields, her hills and valleys, her rivers, 
with their very names so full of music, her stately homes, were 
dear to these men. They had been born and bred to a gentle 
life. There were more college-bred men in Massachusetts, and 
in Plymouth, by far, than could be found in any territory of like 
extent and population in England. The suffering that thev 
encountered, that their children might live free, was suffering of 
the spirit and not of the body. 

It once occurred to me that w^e could not be sure that it is an 
undiluted honor to be invited to speak in eulogy of our Pilgrim 
fathers and mothers on an occasion like this. Have you ever 
reflected, Mr. President, that the chief eulogists of the Pilgrim, since 
we began to celebrate this anniversary, have been, almost without 
exception, the men who had the least of the Pilgrim or the 
Puritan element in them, men who would not have been exiles, 
or reformers, or Pilgrims, under any provocation whatever. 

Webster and Choate, and Everett and Winthrop have paid 
tribute to the Pilgrims better than au)- one else. They were 
great and useful men in their time. But they were all absoluteh' 
devoted to maintaining the existing order of things. But would 
not the Pilgrim have been a failure if that were not true ? Tlie 
social order which was the result of the suffering the Pilgrim 
endured was a social order fit to be maintained. 

We best honor the Pilgrim wdien we reverently preserve and 
cherish the State which was the work of his hands. " Mere 
martyrdom," as was well said by a bright woman, " is general Iv a 
fault, and always a failure. ^ Martyrdom is bearing witness. It is 
a testimonv jriven under the highest sanction known to liumanit\'. 



when tlie man bearetli witness with blood, or life, or with what 
is dearer than heart's blood or life. But if the witness be not be- 
lieved in his own time, or by later orenerations — of which his 
blood is the seed — then the martyr, thouo^h his courage be as 
lofty as ever bore the rack, or liis soul be as pure as that of an 
archangel, is a failure and his memory will perish from among 
men. The exile has suffered in vain if the State he has founded 
in the wilderness is fit only to produce other exiles. 

The glory of the Pilgrim is that his testimony has been be- 
lieved and has prevailed. The cau.se in which he gave it has 
Ijeen won. The verdict has been agreed upon and rendered. 
Posterity has established it by its mighty and irrevocable judg- 
ment. 

The Martyrs of Despotism in all ages have been as brave and 
dauntless as the Mart>rs of Liberty. Gerald, the assasin of Wil- 
liam the Silent, was as sure that he was doing the will of God as 
was his victim. He met his death and the terrible torture which 
preceded it with a courage as undaunted as any hero in history. 
He fortified himself for his crime by reading the Bible, and by 
fasting and prayer, and then, full of religious exaltation, dream- 
ing of angels and of Paradise, he departed for Delf. Completing 
his duty as a good Catholic and faithful subject, he was con- 
demned to have his hand enclosed in a tube, seared with a red-hot 
iron, and to be torn to pieces with burning pinchers. He showed 
no sign of terror, no sorrow or surprise. Fixing his dauntless 
eye on his judges, he repeated with stead\- face his customary 
words, "Ecce homo." 

The Moslem, the Indian, the Hindoo, meet torture and death 
with a courage as dauntless as that of the Pilgrim. But the 
Pilgrim died in the cau.se of civil and religious liberty, and he 
won his cause. He encountered exile and death that he might 
found a State in the government of which every man should have 
his equal share, and a Church where no human authority might 
interpo.se between the .soul and its Maker. The State he founded 
is here, three centuries afterward. It possesses a continent. It 
gives law to a hemisphere. Within the domain of that State the 
soul is free. The principles of the Pilgrim pervade the conti- 



I 



iieiit, and are pervacliiitr the planet: As the child who goes ont, 
poor and obscnre, from his birth-place to seek his fortune, comes 
back again successful, and honored, and enriched, to the parental 
dwellin.y, so the principles of civil liberty under constitutional 
restraint, which have possessed the American continent from 
Hudson Bay to Cape Horn, have crossed the Atlantic again to 
possess the countries of their origin. England is almost a Re- 
public in everything but name. France, after two failures, has 
become a permanent member of the family of Free States. In 
Southern and Oriental Seas, where the adventurous ships of our 
fathers, long after the American Constitution had been framed, 
found nothing but barbarism and brutality, the great Australasian 
Commonwealths are rising in splendor and glory, to take, at no 
distant time, a foremost place in the family of self-governing na- 
tions. Japan — that miracle of the East — declared, when she 
celebrated, last year, her redemption from age-long barbarism, that 
she owes ever^'thing she is to us. 

I do not think that the Pilgrim history will ever be repeated. 
It will not be easy to find the Pilgrim. And in the next place it 
will not be easy now, with the telegraph, and the telephone, and 
steam, and electricity, to find the wilderness. And if we can find 
one, we want it all for the anarchist. 

This is the one story to which, for us, or for our children, noth- 
ing in human annals may be cited for parallel or comparison, save 
the story of Bethlehem. There is none other told under Heaven, 
or among men, like the story of the Pilgrim. Upon this rock is 
founded our house. Let the rains descend, and the floods come, 
and the winds blow and beat upon that house, it shall not fall. 
The saying of our prophet — our Daniel — is fulfilled. The sons 
of the Pilgrims have crossed the Mi.ssissippi and possess the 
shores of the Pacific. The tree our fathers set covered at first 
but a little space by the seaside. It has planted its banyan 
branches in the ground. It has spread along the Lakes. It has 
girdled the Gulf It has spanned the Mississippi. It has covered 
the prairie and the plain. The sweep of its lofty arches rises over 
the Rocky JNIountains, and the Cascades, and the Nevadas. Its 
hardy growth shelters the frozen region of the far Northwest 



8 

Its boughs hang- over the Pacific. So far — so far, it has carried 
its blessing witli it. Self-government, civil and religious freedom, 
the Compact of the Mayflower, the Declaration of Independence, 
the American State, the American Home, the American Consti- 
tution — the.se have gone with it, and in good time — in good 
time — it will .send its roots beneath the waves, and receive under 
its canopy the islands of the sea. 

" Branching so broad and long, that in the ground 
The bended twigs take root, and daughters grow 
About the mother tree, a pillared shade 
High over-arched, and echoing walks between." 

These shall go with it also — .self-government, civil and religious 
freedom, the Compact of the Mayflower, the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, the American State, the American Home, the American 
Constitution — these shall go with it as its shadow. 

American freedom, American self-government, the American 
home, the American Constitution — these .shall follow the Amer- 
ican flag till they cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. 
Wherever the son of the Pilgrim goes he will carry with him 
what the Pilgrim brought from Leyden, the love of libert)', rev- 
erence for law, trust in God — a living God — belief in a personal 
immortalitv, the voice of conscience in the .soul, a heart open to 
the new truth which ever breaketh from the bo.som of the Word. 
His inherited instinct for the building of States will be as sure 
as that of the bee for building her cell or the eagle his nest. 

I am no blind worshipper of the Past. I do not believe that 
Renown and Grace are dead. I am no pessimist or alarmist. I 
am certainly no misanthropist. While there are many men who 
have served their country better in their generation than I have 
in mine, I vield to no man in love for the Republic, or in pride 
in ui\- country, and in my countr)inen who are making to-day 
her honorable history. We may err in our day. Our fathers 
erred in theirs. Yet our generation is better than those who went 
before it. The coming generations will be better than we are. 
The Republic where every man has his share in the go\'ernment 
is better than the monarchv, or the oligarchy, or the aristocracy. 
Our Republic is better than any other Republic. To-day is better 



than yesterday, and to-morrow will be better than to-day. Bnt while 
each generation has its own virtnes, each generation has its own 
dangers, and its own mistakes, and its own shortcomings. 

Tlip difference between the generations of any country with a 
liistory is commonly not one of principle, bnt of emphasis. The 
doctrine of 1776, when we won our independence, planted our 
country on the eternal principles of equality of individuals and of 
nations in political rights, and declared that no man and no people 
had the right to judge of the fitness of any other for self-govern- 
ment. In 1787 the Constitution was builded on the doctrine that 
there were domains within which the Government had no right 
to enter, and that there powers which the people would not com- 
mit to any authority, State or National. The doctrine of 1861 
and the years which followed, declared the natural right of every 
man to his own freedom, whatever might be his race or color ; 
and the natural right of every man to make his dwelling wherever 
on the face of the earth he might think fit. These truths will, 
perhaps, be accepted to-day as generally as they were accepted 
then. Rut if accepted at all they are accepted by the intellect 
only, and not by the heart. They are not much talked about, 
except to ridicule them, to refine about them, or to find some 
plausible reason why they should not be applied. 

The orator of to-day puts his emphasis on Glory, on Empire, 
on Power, on Wealth. We live under, and love, and we will 
shed our heart's blood for the same flag wdiich floated over our 
fathers, and for which they were ready to die. But it sometimes 
seems that the flag has a different meaning, whether it float over 
the Capitol, or the ship-of-war, or the regiment on the march, or 
the public assembly. We no longer speak of it, except coldl\- 
and formally, as the symbol of Liberty ; but only as the symbol 
of power, or of a false, cheap, tinsel glory. 

I think the popular reverence for W^ashington, and Lincoln, 
and for Sumner, and for Webster is not abated. But few political 
speakers quote to-day the great sentences which made them so 
famous, or the great principles to which they devoted their lives. 

Justice Harlan, a noble Kentuckian and brave soldier, as well 
as a great Judge, said in a speech to the Loyal IvCgion, that "the 



fo 

heart of the North liad g^rowii cold toward the millions of bonds- 
men whose chains it had broken." I heard an eminent Repnb- 
lican Senator say, not long ago, that he was sorry that we had 
ever abolislied slavery. 

Hut all these things are temporary, and superficial, and cuta- 
neous. The great heart of the American people beats to-day, as 
ever, for Justice and Liberty. There are times of profound peace 
and unbroken prosperity, when it seems to the unreflecting \'iew 
as if everything that was noble had gone from the character of 
the American people. But it is a grievous mistake. Mr. Choate, 
as you remember, wrote to a friend out of the country, in 1855 : 
'' Your estate is gracious, that keeps you out of our politics. Any- 
thing more low, ob.scene, feculent, the manifold oceanic heavings 
of history have not cast up. We shall come to the worship of 
onions, cats, and things vermiculate." Yet .six years later the 
lofty summons came, and the heroic youth of 1861 answered the 
call. The American people have never cared permanently, and, 
in their hearts, for military glory ; and have never, in their 
hearts, been greed)- for mere empire. 

The War of 1812 brought great glor}- to the Nation. It was 
crowded with Naval victories. It won for as the freedom of the 
seas. But there is no statesman who had anything to do with 
the War of 1812 that is remembered now for the share he had in 
it. That war left us but one name which may fairly be called 
illustrious in our military history — the name of Andrew Jack.son, 
And the glory of New Orleans has been, I think, eclipsed by the 
glory of .putting down Nullification. 

The War with Mexico won for us a great addition to our Em- 
pire, and the dominion of the Pacific. Yet the two Generals who 
won fame in that war, while both did their full duty as soldiers, 
both were opposed in opinion to the war. The statesmen of that 
da)', who brought on the war with Mexico, are almost wholly for- 
gotten now, while Webster and Sumner, and Clay and P>enton, 
and Corwin hold their places in the affection of the people, and 
shine with an undiminished luster. When Theodore Roosevelt 
chose his hero for the imitation of the youth of America, he 
passed by Polk and Pierce, and Buchanan and Gushing, and the 



n 

other statesmen who brought on the Mexican War. He took 
Benton for his example, who gave up power and office and popu- 
larity to protest against it. 

I have sometimes wondered if William Bradford and Brewster, 
and John Robinson and Carver, and Winthrop ever celebrate the 
landing of the Pilgrims in the world where they are now dwell- 
ing. If they do, I wonder who will be invited to the banquet ! 
Who of later generations will be thought worthy to sit by their 
side and share the ambrosia of their recollections, and the nectar 
of their converse? It will be an exclusive society. It will be 
the very aristocracy of martyrdom. Washington will be there, of 
course, and Sam Adams and Laurens, and Nathan Hale and Lin- 
coln, and Sumner. With all their faults, they will be glad to 
see Corwin and old Tom Benton, and Garrison. Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, who died in a French dungeon for the liberty of his 
race, will be there. They invite colored men to dinner in that 
world. Lafayette, who endured the Austrian dungeon for the 
liberty of the world, will be of the company. Napoleon could 
not get in, even in company with the dogs, to lick up the crumbs 
that fall from the table. The deep, sweet voice of Kossuth, the 
Hungarian exile, orator of two worlds, will be heard there. 

I will not undertake to say who of men now living would be 
counted worthy of that illustrious company. Of living men it 
would be presumptuous to speak. But perhaps some of those 
who, in the death struggle of the little Republic in South Africa, 
did the best fighting that this world has seen since Thermopylae, 
will be there. Mabini, the author of the State papers which 
compare with those of our fathers — which won the admiration of 
Lord Chatham — and of whom I hope our Republic is not afraid, 
that we keep him in exile at Guam, will be welcome, to discuss 
with John Winthrop the true boundary between liberty and 
authority in the State. 

But this hour is consecrated to patriotic memories, and to filial 
love. We are a company of brethren celebrating our Mother's 
birthday. Let us not dw^ell on the faults or mistakes of each 
other. Our Pilgrim and Puritan fathers and mothers were men 
and women. Thev had the faults of men and women. But the}- 



12 

are to us tlie noblest men and women that ever lived. Onr coun- 
trymen to-day are men and women. They have the faults of 
men and women. Yet our country is to us the best and the 
noblest country the earth ever saw, at its best and noblest day. 
IvCt us rather rememl)er how we took Cuba by the hand and de- 
livered her from her age-long bondage; how we led hesitating 
and halting Europe to the relief of her imprisoned Ambassadors 
in China; how we are at this moment holding our mighty shield 
over beleaguered Veneziifa, while Theodore Roosevelt says to 
imperial England and haughty Germany: "Thus far shall you 
come, and no farther, and here shall your proud fleets be stayed." 
Sureh- that tree is for the healing of the nations, beneath whose 
shadow sixteen Republics are dwelling in safet}' and peace. 

The teaching of this Pilgrim celebration for us is, that our 
country can be great and noble only as she listens to the Pilgrim 
voice and learns the Pilgrim lesson: "Righteousness exalteth a 
Nation. He that saveth his life shall lose it." Let us have Lib- 
erty, if we have to go into exile to get it. Let us have Justice, 
though we must dwell in the wilderness to enjoy it. Let us obey 
God's voice, if we must meet death in his service." Or rather, 
"Where Liberty is, there can be no exile. Where Justice is, 
there can be no wilderness. Where God is, there can be no death." 



„t;J.^R«RY OF CONGRESS 



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